The world this week

The fight continues

AP

Fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, which has killed some 100 people, all but a handful of them Palestinians, changed from mass protests to shooting incidents of great ferocity. Battles in Nablus and Ramallah were particularly inflammatory. Israeli tanks and helicopters struck targets in Ramallah after two Israeli soldiers were killed in the town by an angry Palestinian mob.

An American navy destroyer with 300 people on board was rammed by a rubber raft full of explosives in a port in Yemen. Four sailors were killed and several others seriously injured in the attack, which struck the vessel at the water line. The ship was refuelling on the way from the Red Sea to Bahrain.

The leader of Zimbabwe's opposition party, Morgan Tsvangirai, was questioned by the police for drawing a comparison between Robert Mugabe and Slobodan Milosevic, thus obliquely suggesting the violent removal of the president. The government announced a pardon for acts of political violence committed during the election campaign earlier this year.

Serbia starts again

Slobodan Milosevic was forced out of Yugoslavia's presidency after 13 years in power. Yielding to popular protest, he handed over to Vojislav Kostunica, a moderate nationalist, who had beaten him in the election on September 24th. A struggle went on between the ex-president's Socialist party and the new administration for control of the police and other levers of power. Parliamentary elections were called for December. The EU lifted some sanctions against Serbia.

Poland's president, Alexander Kwasniewski, a communist turned social democrat, was re-elected to another five years in office, winning 54% of the vote. The candidate of the right-wing Solidarity government, Marian Krzaklewski, came third, with only 16%. Lech Walesa, a former president who led the struggle against communism in the 1980s, took 1%.

France threatened punitive measures against Monaco unless the principality took effective measures against money-laundering and tax-evasion. The authorities in Monte Carlo said the French attitude was “incongruous”.

EPA

Greek workers brought Athens to a stop on October 10th, with a general strike in protest against the government's planned labour reforms.

Another debate

The second televised debate between George W. Bush of Texas and Al Gore of Tennessee was held in Winston- Salem, North Carolina. Neither candidate delivered a knock-out blow, but Mr Bush was widely adjudged the winner.

The Republican vice-presidential candidate, Dick Cheney, sparked criticism from members of his own party by saying that homosexuals should be free to choose how they lived and that gay marriages were not a concern of the federal government.

The House of Representatives, under pressure from American farmers, tentatively approved limited sales of food and medicines to Cuba, the first for 40 years.

British researchers suggested that a volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands might, one day, cause a tidal wave to swamp America's east coast.

Hundreds of Peruvian farm workers marched through Lima at the start of a two-day national strike to protest against under-investment in farming by the government.

The incoming government of Vicente Fox in Mexico produced a plan to keep the budget deficit to 0.5% of GDP and to bring in some tax reforms. At the same time, Carlos Salinas, a former president, blamed his successor, Ernesto Zedillo, for causing the collapse of the peso in 1995.

Rulers still

The ruling coalition, the People's Alliance, claimed victory in Sri Lanka's parliamentary election. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who became the world's first woman prime minister in 1960, died on polling day, aged 84.

The Philippine Senate opened an investigation into a report that President Joseph Estrada had received $8.7m from a gambling racket. Cardinal Jaime Sin, the Philippines' senior prelate, called on him to resign. The vice-president did go.